The failed attempt to bring back double-jobbing is a disaster for Jeffrey Donaldson, as he is now besmirched with blame for what looks like a dodgy deal without getting any of its benefits. Nor may he deserve much blame, as the idea was initiated and supported by other parties.
Does disaster change the DUP leader’s plans? Double-jobbing was only to be reintroduced for limited periods to avoid Westminster by-elections, so Donaldson had always been committing himself to leaving the Commons when vowing to run for the assembly. He has also vowed to “return to the assembly”, which rules out running then co-opting someone else - a manoeuvre that remains possible, although implausible, if performed straight away.
If Donaldson does not win a Stormont seat he was never going to have to resign his Westminster seat, double-jobbing or not.
What the DUP leader has lost is the lifeboat of remaining Lagan Valley MP until the next general election, should a Stormont executive not be formed or collapse after May’s assembly election. That should motivate him to ensure collapse does not happen - in contrast to the DUP’s claim last week that double-jobbing would “encourage stability”.
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The chance of an executive not being formed is widely under-appreciated. Formation is currently required within two weeks of an election but this is about to be extended to up to six months, under the same bill the government tried to amend to allow double-jobbing. The change is part of the reforms agreed in New Decade, New Approach, so there is an urgent consensus across Stormont and Westminster to have it in force before May’s poll. If an executive is not formed under these new rules, the previous ministers stay on in a caretaker capacity. However, the government has opted to let the courts sort out precisely how this might work. In short, the DUP could faff around until November in a token tantrum over the protocol, the appointment of a Sinn Féin first minister, or whatever. Just as well Stormont is sailing without Sir Jeffrey’s lifeboat.
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The Northern Ireland Fiscal Council, another creation of New Decade, New Approach, has produced its first annual assessment of Stormont’s budget - the main function of this new independent body.
It provides an authoritative debunking of the notion the executive is facing cuts. Ministers have portrayed the new three-year draft budget as requiring a two per cent ‘cut’ from all departments to fund a 10 per cent increase in health. As the Fiscal Commission notes, the executive is getting so much extra funding overall from the block grant “that for most departments, this extra money more than compensates for the two per cent cut.”
Stormont’s problem is not a shortage of cash but an inability to make choices, in health most of all.
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The Council for Catholic Maintained Schools (CCMS) has objected to UUP leader Doug Beattie describing Northern Ireland’s school system as “educational apartheid”.
The CCMS also complained in 2013 when US president Barack Obama called for an end to our “segregated schools”, comparing them to the African-American experience of racial segregation.
Perhaps the bishops should start referring to ‘partitioned schools’, to see if they can turn this argument around.
The issue is in any case about to be forced by practicalities, with the Education Authority warning one in three schools will have to be considered for closure in the next five years. Although rural areas will be the worst affected, the same pattern of too many unsustainably small schools occurs everywhere. In many places, the choice will soon no longer be between a Catholic school or a state school but an integrated school or no school.
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The Department for Infrastructure has caused horror in not-so-leafy south Belfast by cutting down riverside trees for a flood defence scheme. There is no doubt the scheme is required and the department insists the work was the minimum necessary. However, there is also no doubt trees are considered an urban pest by pretty much everyone in the public and private sectors who might have to work around them, whatever greenwash they spout to the contrary. Utility firms might be left to rip up freshly-laid roads and pavements on a whim but the mere possibility of a root displacing a kerbstone requires a chainsaw massacre. When all this was the responsibility of the Department of the Environment, staff joked it stood for ‘the Destroyers of the Earth’.
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The storm in a bin-lid over Kate Hoey’s “concerns” about nationalists in the professions has raged into a third week, which can only mean everyone is enjoying themselves enormously.
As the writer Susan McKay has pointed out, Hoey’s comments - in a foreword to an anti-protocol essay by Jamie Bryson - are only significant because Jeffrey Donaldson endorsed both.
This has further significance by recalling another delicate political moment. Donaldson led the DUP team that vetoed a deal at the 2013 Haass talks, where Bryson was indulged by unionist parties as a key grass-roots voice and claimed to have been briefed and shown negotiating papers.
While the DUP leader is worrying about too many nationalists, should the rest of us be concerned he does not know enough loyalists?
